good night, moon, good night monomaniacal dictator

Try and guess what kind of story was requested tonight..

Mama tell me a story about...

a. Barbie Princess charm school
b. unicorns
c. Disney Princesses
d. Santa Ana

If you guessed the Mexican despot, the Napoleon of the West, the man who massacred the heroes of the Alamo, you would be correct.

This is why I love having weird kids--because they make me remember things I forgot and they make me curious all over again--and why I am grateful for the internet and a little site called wikepedia.

oh crap, I've been outnumbered.

This just happened. I was sorting some laundry and Tallulah brought me one of the last Easter cookies. It was a big chick wrapped in a cellophane package.

"My?" she asked, which is Tallulah speak for "is this mine, can I have this?" "No, you may not," I said, the standard reply to 75 percent of cookie requests.

Then I went back to the laundry room, which has a view of the family room. And I saw the following:

Tallulah walked into the room, where Annabelle was watching Max and Ruby. She silently showed Annabelle the cookie. Annabelle silently grabbed it and ran to her room and Tallulah silently toddled after her. Annabelle silently re-emerged with her scissors in one hand and half a cookie in the other. Tallulah silently followed eating the other half of the cookie.

I silently shook my head and thought "oh crap, I've been outnumbered," and marveled at the steep 50 percent opening tax that Annabelle managed to silently collect.

Sometimes it is better for all parties involved to just move along.

evolution of a date

1992-1996 The romance years- Movies, dinners, slightly mormonish outings that included picnics and daytime festivals. lots of board games with friends


1996-1997 the year apart- lots of marathon phone calls where we said things like "you hang up first, no you hang up first..."


1997-1999 the early marriage years- no money, so lots of board games with friends. and getting used to the freedom that comes with adulthood. We could go out to eat at 2:00 in the morning if we wanted, and we did. Board games. Still lots of board games


1999-2004 the dink(double income no kids) heights years, part one- we would call people to come to dinner and then not serve them dinner until late at night because H was the slowest cook in the world. His sister dubbed him the midnight chef, and I still secretly call him this when he preps the vegetables rather than gets the fire started. Friday nights were uno nights where our friends would come over and we would play Uno until 1 in the morning. Board games, always board games.


2004-2008 the dink garden oaks years- this is when we got kind of crazy and spent almost every Friday and Saturday night going out to eat and then going to bars, drinking tequila and playing darts until the wee hours of the morning. And I will never forget the night when my girlfriend and I hit six bulls eyes in a row and beat our loser husbands' asses at cricket. It will always be remembered as the night of the six bulls eyes. And board games, standard.


2008-2010. The baby years. where we did cuddly, slightly mormonish family things, like picnics at discovery green and herman park. we spent mornings in bed, cuddled with out little bundle of joy marveling at the wonder that is your first child. Sunday evenings we were at our friends house eating bbq or at our house with friends playing bocci ball. An occasional game of scrabble while on vacation and the baby was asleep


November 2010 until November 2011- the drought (aka getting used to having two kids) we did nothing. we had no fun. sometimes, we would watch an on demand movie. there were no board games--we were just bored and way too old to have a newborn.


November 2011 until April 20th - the babysitter years. We found a babysitter. We like her. We (crazy me) trust that she will not kidnap or harm the children in anyway that involves a grand jury .


And now we have to figure out what to do with each other. We are simply too old to go to rudz and play darts until 2 in the morning. And we have almost nothing to say to each other unless it is about the kids.

Which brings us to tonight. So we went out to eat. And I listened to H complain about the food. And then we were out of things to do. Our board game friends are out of town--not having kids of their own, they are still in the dink fun years.

So we drove around town and I told him to pretend he was trying to impress me--where would he take me? His answer- to my house.

"I am not that kind of girl," I replied. "well, then I would just take you home." So he did, kind of... we drove by our old house and our old apartment. And then we went to rudz and I had tequila, he had a beer and he beat my ass with his freakish dart skills--although I will say I held my own for a while. We had fun- -just the two of us, no kids.

And then, back home by 11:00. Cinderella stays out later than me.

So here we are, somewhere between vomiting on the floor of Cyclone Anaya's and going to a Symphony Concert and having a nightcap at Mi Tierra (my parent's date of choice). This is 38, on a date.

And now I have to stop my blog because I have to....(h told me to write this sentence, but I will not finish what he wanted me to say, because I am not that kind of girl).

what it takes to get my idiot dog to come in from the rain

Dearest Bella,

Ms. Stella Stevens and the Misses Nguyens
Request the pleasure of your company,
For an April Showers party
Today, between the hours of 10 a.m. and three o’clock in the afternoon
At the Ngyuen home
Snacks, including sippy cups, and other things the girls are eating will be provided/available for you to snatch.

Repondez s’il si vous plait

Kind Regards,
Ms. Stevens and the Misses Nguyens

Sunday go to meetin'

These pictures represent what Annabelle and Tallulah look like when we go to church. Cute right? Almost angelic--I am not sure if you can see, but Annabelle has a crown braid on her head. Very lovely. But, beauty is as beauty does, and these beauties do whatever the hell they please during church.

I shouldn't complain about Annabelle, being 4 she is somewhat compliant. She goes to the children's mass and after it is over and she joins "big church," she just squirms a lot, and plays quietly-- most of the time. But Tallulah is another kettle of fish.

When Annabelle was Tallulah's age, we would go to the cryroom for most of the mass. And I would get annoyed because there would be all of these other badly behaved families of kids. And I would think--geez, make your kids behave. Ahhh.... the snobby thoughts of a mom with an only child.

Tallulah squirms, talks, plays, gets fussy, throws her sippy cup, takes everything out of my purse, and I mean everything and throws it around for all to see. I could hardly wait until she turned one and I could send her off to the church nursery and enjoy mass. The problem with the nursery is that now, when she has to come to church, she behaves even worse, because she is never at the Mass.

To wit: today--they were short on volunteers at the nursery, so I took her with me to mass. Things were actually going well and I was surprised because a few short weeks ago, her behavior at the Castroville Saturday service was so horrible my mom and I had to go to the Beverage Barn after and get a smirnoff ice to calm our nerves. But by the end of mass, she had had enough and started to make these really guttural noises of derision. This made Annabelle laugh, hysterically and uncontrollably, which made me mortified and in my mortified state, I tried to slink down to the bottom of the pew so no one would see me-- all the while threatening my children with various forms of punishment-- which made Tallulah make more noise which caused Annabelle to laugh harder which made everyone in my pew and the one behind me start laughing. When Church was over, a man patted my arm and assured me he had "been there, many, many times."

Perhaps. But he wasn't at St. Louis Catholic Church in Castroville a few weeks prior. You see, dumping tampons all over the floor was not enough for her. Tallulah decided to express her displeasure with the length of the homily by exiting our pew, walking into the aisle, squatting down, grunting, and doing her business. Right there before God and everybody.

And that, my friends, is why we violated the Texas open container law.

to my Uncle Bob, who is ailing

Back during the Great Marriage Debacle that was the year 1987, my dad loaded up my sister and I in the minivan and took us to see my grandmother--without my mom. Needless to say, I didn't want to go. I was (am ) very attached to my mother and I had never been apart from her for any length of time other than for the occasional slumber party.

And now we were headed to Abernathy. It was going to be weird enough, with my grandaddy gone, weird seeing the big red chair where he sat, vacant. Without him to snatch us in his lap and tickle us when we walked by, or see him drinking coffee with his brother-in-law, hearing my grandmother fuss and complain about him in the way she did the people she loved. Without him, the whole house felt bleak and cold and empty.

And now I had to go and face that big creepiness without my mom.

I wasn't sure who was going to do our hair or fix our snacks or kiss us goodnight or make the trip fun, in the way that my mom always did.

When we got there, it seemed that everyone was putting on a brave face. Pretending that nothing was wrong, that no one was missing, and so I went along with the gag, pretending too, combing out my sister's hair, making her snacks and trying to make the trip fun for her, in the way that I always do.

And then my Aunt and Uncle Bob came over. People were scattered around the house and it was just me and him in the living room. I remember he read a sticker on my shirt that said "besame, yo hablo espanol" "Hmmm, that does that say kiss me I speak Spanish?" "Yes," i said. "I seem to remember that from when I took Latin." We talked--he actually talked to me like I was an adult and then he did what no one else on that entire dreadful trip did.

He asked me how my mom was doing. And I never, ever forgot that.

If you lived in Siberia, and were dreaming of the sunny skies, dear hearts and gentle people of the Friendly State and were trying to conjure in your mind what a Texan looks like, the image you would see would surely be that of my Uncle. Tall, jet black hair slicked and parted neatly to the side, western dress pants and a white shirt, taciturn, dry humored, and begins most sentences with the phrase "this ol boy...." Oh, and the rocking chair. Always sits on a rocking chair. The last time I saw my grandmother, she complained about him sitting in that ol' rockin' chair....

And now he is ailing, and I hope he gets to felling better real soon.

communist jungle chickens

I learned this weekend that the communists of north vietnam took all the best chickens from villages into the jungle to feed their soldiers. And being a wiley sort, they trained them in such a way where the male chicken took care of the chicks instead of the hens, which, I suppose, were reading the poultry version of the communist manifesto. They also made special bamboo cages and wiped their underarms with chicken to make them smell like chicken which would endear themselves to the chicken. At this point I was reassured my leg wasn't being pulled, but am not completely satisfied of such assurance.

I learned this from my father-in-law while he and H were reconstructing the coop, (first such endeavor for him, third for h) Annabelle and my mother in law were eating popsicles, and mosquitoes were eating Tallulah.

While I remain unsure of the communist jungle chickens, I am sure of one thing--the man can build a chicken coop. It is now sturdy enough to withstand monsoon force winds, and hopefully they will come back soon so he can finish it.